Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Being what the ladies called a "sharp dressed man" and he could hardly argue, Bob knew his ingenious Wash And Dry While You Wait Business Suit invention was just what pressed-for-time businessmen were waiting for. Why, before you know it, he thought, there'll be one of these in office lobbies, airports and train stations across America.

An acoustics researcher, he specialized in building acoustics and underwater sound. He acted as the acoustical consultant for the U.S. Capitol. In the 1920s he used the box in the picture to investigate several topics in building acoustics, including both the acoustics of “talking” motion pictures and those of the courtroom. In addition, Chrisler studied sound abatement in apartment buildings and in airplanes, and published texts and research monographs. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow and Vice President of the Acoustical Society of America. He died in 1953, aged 68.

It looks like something is missing from the device with the motor. The long steel U-channel on top appears to be designed to have something electrical on it; the four shiny discs on the shaft look like slip rings, and the four posts around the discs are the brushes that contact the slip rings. This assembly is used to conduct electricity from the fixed base to the rotating bar. There are wires from the slip ring discs up to the rotating bar, but they aren't connected to anything - and the piece of armored cable that's taped to the bar would flail the motor if somebody turned the motor on.

I don't think you can tell from this photo whether the slip rings were being used for line voltage (120 V AC or more) or something else. If the Library of Congress caption that SocialPrimate found is accurate, then there were probably loudspeaker(s) on this bar at one time, and the slip rings were being used for audio. As fixj mentioned, the Leslie speaker was a commercial development of this idea. The pictures I can find of Leslies show that the speakers themselves didn't rotate (no slip rings); only the woofer baffle and tweeter horns rotated.

There could also be other loudspeaker(s) or something else in the room that is out of shot.

Uncle Sam seeking way to improve theaters for talkies. How to improve theaters for talking motion pictures is a problem now being tackled by the Bureau of Standards. V.L. Chrisler of the Sound Section, who looks like he is imprisoned in stocks, is really studying the "echo effect" in this room and his body and the observing instruments are enclosed so as not to interfere with the tests. It has been found that cushioned seats in talking picture theaters aid in the absorption of the "echo effect."

Sort of an early version of a baseball dunk. Only you throw the pies at yourself, by manipulating the joystick on the console. The glass is there to save the dry-cleaning bill, as a suit and tie were still de rigeur.

Since this photo evidently precedes the invention of safety glass, let's hope the anticipated shrapnel is nothing more lethal than custard pie.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.